Science and Health
with Key to The Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter VII - Physiology

 

179:1
in its proper signification will perform the sudden cures
of which it is capable; but this can be done only by
taking up the cross and following Christ in the daily
life.
Absent patients
179:5
Science can heal the sick, who are absent from their
healers, as well as those present, since space is no ob-
stacle to Mind. Immortal Mind heals what eye
hath not seen; but the spiritual capacity to ap-
prehend thought and to heal by the Truth-power, is won
only as man is found, not in self-righteousness, but re-
flecting the divine nature.
Horses mistaught
179:12
Every medical method has its advocates. The prefer-
ence of mortal mind for a certain method creates a demand
for that method, and the body then seems to re-
quire such treatment. You can even educate a
healthy horse so far in physiology that he will take cold
without his blanket, whereas the wild animal, left to his
instincts, sniffs the wind with delight. The epizootic is
a humanly evolved ailment, which a wild horse might
never have.
Medical works objectionable
179:21
Treatises on anatomy, physiology, and health, sustained
by what is termed material law, are the pro-
moters of sickness and disease. It should not
be proverbial, that so long as you read medical works you
will be sick.
179:26
The sedulous matron – studying her Jahr with homoe-
opathic pellet and powder in hand, ready to put you
into a sweat, to move the bowels, or to produce sleep –
is unwittingly sowing the seeds of reliance on matter,
and her household may erelong reap the effect of this
mistake.
179:32
Descriptions of disease given by physicians and adver-
180:1
tisements of quackery are both prolific sources of sickness.
As mortal mind is the husbandman of error, it should be
taught to do the body no harm and to uproot its false
sowing.
The invalid's outlook
180:5
The patient sufferer tries to be satisfied when he sees
his would-be healers busy, and his faith in their efforts is
somewhat helpful to them and to himself; but
in Science one must understand the resusci-
tating law of Life. This is the seed within itself bearing
fruit after its kind, spoken of in Genesis.
180:11
Physicians should not deport themselves as if Mind
were non-existent, nor take the ground that all causation
is matter, instead of Mind. Ignorant that the human
mind governs the body, its phenomenon, the invalid may
unwittingly add more fear to the mental reservoir already
overflowing with that emotion.
Wrong and right way
180:17
Doctors should not implant disease in the thoughts of
their patients, as they so frequently do, by declaring dis-
ease to be a fixed fact, even before they go to
work to eradicate the disease through the ma-
terial faith which they inspire. Instead of furnishing
thought with fear, they should try to correct this turbulent
element of mortal mind by the influence of divine Love
which casteth out fear.
180:25
When man is governed by God, the ever-present
Mind who understands all things, man knows that with
God all things are possible. The only way to this
living Truth, which heals the sick, is found in the Science
of divine Mind as taught and demonstrated by Christ
Jesus.
The important decision
180:31
To reduce inflammation, dissolve a tumor, or cure or-
ganic disease, I have found divine Truth more potent than
181:1
all lower remedies. And why not, since Mind, God, is
the source and condition of all existence? Before decid-
ing that the body, matter, is disordered, one
should ask, "Who art thou that repliest to
Spirit? Can matter speak for itself, or does
it hold the issues of life?" Matter, which can neither
suffer nor enjoy, has no partnership with pain and pleas-
ure, but mortal belief has such a partnership.
Manipulation unscientific
181:9
When you manipulate patients, you trust in electricity
and magnetism more than in Truth; and for
that reason, you employ matter rather than
Mind. You weaken or destroy your power when you re-
sort to any except spiritual means.
181:14
It is foolish to declare that you manipulate patients but
that you lay no stress on manipulation. If this be so, why
manipulate? In reality you manipulate because you are
ignorant of the baneful effects of magnetism, or are not
sufficiently spiritual to depend on Spirit. In either case
you must improve your mental condition till you finally
attain the understanding of Christian Science.
Not words but deeds
181:21
If you are too material to love the Science of Mind and
are satisfied with good words instead of effects, if you
adhere to error and are afraid to trust Truth,
the question then recurs, "Adam, where art
thou?" It is unnecessary to resort to aught besides
Mind in order to satisfy the sick that you are doing some-
thing for them, for if they are cured, they generally know
it and are satisfied.
181:29
"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
If you have more faith in drugs than in Truth, this faith
will incline you to the side of matter and error. Any
hypnotic power you may exercise will diminish your
182:1
ability to become a Scientist, and vice versa. The act
of healing the sick through divine Mind alone, of casting
out error with Truth, shows your position as a Christian
Scientist.
Physiology or Spirit
182:5
The demands of God appeal to thought only; but the
claims of mortality, and what are termed laws of nature,
appertain to matter. Which, then, are we to
accept as legitimate and capable of producing
the highest human good? We cannot obey both physi-
ology and Spirit, for one absolutely destroys the other,
and one or the other must be supreme in the affections.
It is impossible to work from two standpoints. If we
attempt it, we shall presently "hold to the one,
and despise the other."
182:15
The hypotheses of mortals are antagonistic to Science
and cannot mix with it. This is clear to those, who heal
the sick on the basis of Science.
No material law
182:18
Mind's government of the body must supersede the so‑
called laws of matter. Obedience to material law pre-
vents full obedience to spiritual law, – the law
which overcomes material conditions and puts
matter under the feet of Mind. Mortals entreat the di-
vine Mind to heal the sick, and forthwith shut out the aid
of Mind by using material means, thus working against
themselves and their prayers and denying man's God‑
given ability to demonstrate Mind's sacred power. Pleas
for drugs and laws of health come from some sad incident,
or else from ignorance of Christian Science and its tran-
scendent power.
182:30
To admit that sickness is a condition over which God
has no control, is to presuppose that omnipotent power
is powerless on some occasions. The law of Christ, or
183:1
Truth, makes all things possible to Spirit; but the so‑
called laws of matter would render Spirit of no avail, and
demand obedience to materialistic codes, thus departing
from the basis of one God, one lawmaker. To suppose
that God constitutes laws of inharmony is a mistake; dis-
cords have no support from nature or divine law, however
much is said to the contrary.
183:8
Can the agriculturist, according to belief, produce a
crop without sowing the seed and awaiting its germina-
tion according to the laws of nature? The answer is no,
and yet the Scriptures inform us that sin, or error, first
caused the condemnation of man to till the ground, and
indicate that obedience to God will remove this necessity.
Truth never made error necessary, nor devised a law to
perpetuate error.
Laws of nature spiritual
183:16
The supposed laws which result in weariness and dis-
ease are not His laws, for the legitimate and only possible
action of Truth is the production of harmony.
Laws of nature are laws of Spirit; but mortals
commonly recognize as law that which hides the power of
Spirit. Divine Mind rightly demands man's entire obe-
dience, affection, and strength. No reservation is made
for any lesser loyalty. Obedience to Truth gives man
power and strength. Submission to error superinduces
loss of power.
Belief and understanding
183:26
Truth casts out all evils and materialistic methods
with the actual spiritual law, – the law which gives
sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, voice
to the dumb, feet to the lame. If Christian
Science dishonors human belief, it honors spir-
itual understanding; and the one Mind only is entitled to
honor.
184:1
The so-called laws of health are simply laws of mortal
belief. The premises being erroneous, the conclusions
are wrong. Truth makes no laws to regulate sickness,
sin, and death, for these are unknown to Truth and should
not be recognized as reality.
184:6
Belief produces the results of belief, and the penal-
ties it affixes last so long as the belief and are insepara-
ble from it. The remedy consists in probing the trouble
to the bottom, in finding and casting out by denial the
error of belief which produces a mortal disorder, never
honoring erroneous belief with the title of law nor yield-
ing obedience to it. Truth, Life, and Love are the only
legitimate and eternal demands on man, and they are
spiritual lawgivers, enforcing obedience through divine
statutes.
Laws of human belief
184:16
Controlled by the divine intelligence, man is harmoni-
ous and eternal. Whatever is governed by a false belief
is discordant and mortal. We say man suffers
from the effects of cold, heat, fatigue. This
is human belief, not the truth of being, for matter cannot
suffer. Mortal mind alone suffers, – not because a law
of matter has been transgressed, but because a law of this
so-called mind has been disobeyed. I have demonstrated
this as a rule of divine Science by destroying the delusion
of suffering from what is termed a fatally broken physical
law.
184:27
A woman, whom I cured of consumption, always
breathed with great difficulty when the wind was from
the east. I sat silently by her side a few moments. Her
breath came gently. The inspirations were deep and nat-
ural. I then requested her to look at the weather-vane.
She looked and saw that it pointed due east. The wind
185:1
had not changed, but her thought of it had and so her diffi-
culty in breathing had gone. The wind had not produced
the difficulty. My metaphysical treatment changed the
action of her belief on the lungs, and she never suffered
again from east winds, but was restored to health.
A so-called mind-cure
185:6
No system of hygiene but Christian Science is purely
mental. Before this book was published, other books
were in circulation, which discussed "mental
medicine" and "mind-cure," operating through
the power of the earth's magnetic currents to regulate life
and health. Such theories and such systems of so-called
mind-cure, which have sprung up, are as material as the
prevailing systems of medicine. They have their birth
in mortal mind, which puts forth a human conception
in the name of Science to match the divine Science of im-
mortal Mind, even as the necromancers of Egypt strove
to emulate the wonders wrought by Moses. Such theories
have no relationship to Christian Science, which rests on
the conception of God as the only Life, substance, and
intelligence, and excludes the human mind as a spiritual
factor in the healing work.
Jesus and hypnotism
185:22
Jesus cast out evil and healed the sick, not only with-
out drugs, but without hypnotism, which is
the reverse of ethical and pathological Truth-
power.
185:26
Erroneous mental practice may seem for a time to bene-
fit the sick, but the recovery is not permanent. This is
because erroneous methods act on and through the ma-
terial stratum of the human mind, called brain, which is
but a mortal consolidation of material mentality and its
suppositional activities.
False stimulus
185:32
A patient under the influence of mortal mind is healed
186:1
only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by
emptying his thought of the false stimulus
and reaction of will-power and filling it with
the divine energies of Truth.
186:5
Christian Science destroys material beliefs through the
understanding of Spirit, and the thoroughness of this work
determines health. Erring human mind-forces can work
only evil under whatever name or pretence they are em-
ployed; for Spirit and matter, good and evil, light and
darkness, cannot mingle.
Evil negative and self-destructive
186:11
Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth.
It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It
is unreal, because it presupposes the absence
of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent.
Every mortal must learn that there is neither
power nor reality in evil.
186:17
Evil is self-assertive. It says: "I am a real entity, over-
mastering good." This falsehood should strip evil of all
pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It
can never destroy one iota of good. Every attempt of evil
to destroy good is a failure, and only aids in peremptorily
punishing the evil-doer. If we concede the same reality to
discord as to harmony, discord has as lasting a claim upon
us as has harmony. If evil is as real as good, evil is also as
immortal. If death is as real as Life, immortality is a myth.
If pain is as real as the absence of pain, both must be im-
mortal; and if so, harmony cannot be the law of being.
Ignorant idolatry
186:28
Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be
self-deceived. If mortal mind knew how to be better, it
would be better. Since it must believe in some-
thing besides itself, it enthrones matter as deity.
The human mind has been an idolater from the beginning,
187:1
having other gods and believing in more than the one
Mind.
187:3
As mortals do not comprehend even mortal existence,
how ignorant must they be of the all-knowing Mind and
of His creations.
187:6
Here you may see how so-called material sense creates
its own forms of thought, gives them material names, and
then worships and fears them. With pagan blindness,
it attributes to some material god or medicine an ability
beyond itself. The beliefs of the human mind rob and
enslave it, and then impute this result to another illusive
personification, named Satan.
Action of mortal mind
187:13
The valves of the heart, opening and closing for the pas-
sage of the blood, obey the mandate of mor-
tal mind as directly as does the hand, ad-
mittedly moved by the will. Anatomy allows the mental
cause of the latter action, but not of the former.
187:18
We say, "My hand hath done it." What is this my but
mortal mind, the cause of all materialistic action? All
voluntary, as well as miscalled involuntary, action of the
mortal body is governed by this so-called mind, not by
matter. There is no involuntary action. The divine Mind
includes all action and volition, and man in Science is gov-
erned by this Mind. The human mind tries to classify
action as voluntary and involuntary, and suffers from the
attempt.
Death and the body
187:27
If you take away this erring mind, the mortal material
body loses all appearance of life or action, and this so‑
called mind then calls itself dead; but the hu-
man mind still holds in belief a body, through
which it acts and which appears to the human mind to
live, – a body like the one it had before death. This body
188:1
is put off only as the mortal, erring mind yields to God,
immortal Mind, and man is found in His image.
Embryonic sinful thoughts
188:3
What is termed disease does not exist. It is neither
mind nor matter. The belief of sin, which has grown
terrible in strength and influence, is an uncon-
scious error in the beginning, – an embryonic
thought without motive; but afterwards it
governs the so-called man. Passion, depraved appetites,
dishonesty, envy, hatred, revenge ripen into action, only to
pass from shame and woe to their final punishment.
Disease a dream
188:11
Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in
matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like
the dream we have in sleep, in which every one
recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of
mind. In both the waking, and the sleeping dream, the
dreamer thinks that his body is material and the suffering
is in that body.
188:18
The smile of the sleeper indicates the sensation pro-
duced physically by the pleasure of a dream. In the
same way pain and pleasure, sickness and care, are
traced upon mortals by unmistakable signs.
188:22
Sickness is a growth of error, springing from mortal
ignorance or fear. Error rehearses error. What causes
disease cannot cure it. The soil of disease is mortal
mind, and you have an abundant or scanty crop of disease,
according to the seedlings of fear. Sin and the fear of
disease must be uprooted and cast out.
Sense yields to understanding
188:28
When darkness comes over the earth, the physical
senses have no immediate evidence of a sun.
The human eye knows not where the orb of
day is, nor if it exists. Astronomy gives the
desired information regarding the sun. The human or
189:1
material senses yield to the authority of this science, and
they are willing to leave with astronomy the explanation of
the sun's influence over the earth. If the eyes see no sun
for a week, we still believe that there is solar light and
heat. Science (in this instance named natural) raises
the human thought above the cruder theories of the
human mind, and casts out a fear.
189:8
In like manner mortals should no more deny the power
of Christian Science to establish harmony and to explain
the effect of mortal mind on the body, though the cause
be unseen, than they should deny the existence of the sun-
light when the orb of day disappears, or doubt that the sun
will reappear. The sins of others should not make good
men suffer.
Ascending the scale
189:15
We call the body material; but it is as truly mortal
mind, according to its degree, as is the material brain
which is supposed to furnish the evidence
of all mortal thought or things. The human
mortal mind, by an inevitable perversion, makes all
things start from the lowest instead of from the highest
mortal thought. The reverse is the case with all the
formations of the immortal divine Mind. They proceed
from the divine source; and so, in tracing them, we con-
stantly ascend in infinite being.
Human reproduction
189:25
From mortal mind comes the reproduction of the
species, – first the belief of inanimate, and then of ani-
mate matter. According to mortal thought,
the development of embryonic mortal mind
commences in the lower, basal portion of the brain, and
goes on in an ascending scale by evolution, keeping always
in the direct line of matter, for matter is the subjective
condition of mortal mind.
190:1
Next we have the formation of so-called embryonic
mortal mind, afterwards mortal men or mortals, – all this
while matter is a belief, ignorant of itself, ignorant of what
it is supposed to produce. The mortal says that an inani-
mate unconscious seedling is producing mortals, both body
and mind; and yet neither a mortal mind nor the immortal
Mind is found in brain or elsewhere in matter or in mortals.
Human stature
190:8
This embryonic and materialistic human belief called
mortal man in turn fills itself with thoughts
of pain and pleasure, of life and death, and
arranges itself into five so-called senses, which presently
measure mind by the size of a brain and the bulk of a
body, called man.
Human frailty
190:14
Human birth, growth, maturity, and decay are as the
grass springing from the soil with beautiful green blades,
afterwards to wither and return to its native
nothingness. This mortal seeming is temporal;
it never merges into immortal being, but finally disap-
pears, and immortal man, spiritual and eternal, is found
to be the real man.
The Hebrew bard, swayed by mortal thoughts, thus
swept his lyre with saddening strains on human existence:
190:23
As for man, his days are as grass:
As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;
And the place thereof shall know it no more.
190:27
When hope rose higher in the human heart, he sang:
190:28
As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness:
I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.
. . . . .
For with Thee is the fountain of life;
In Thy light shall we see light.
191:1
The brain can give no idea of God's man. It can take
no cognizance of Mind. Matter is not the organ of infi-
nite Mind.
191:4
As mortals give up the delusion that there is more than
one Mind, more than one God, man in God's likeness will
appear, and this eternal man will include in that likeness
no material element.
The immortal birth
191:8
As a material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a
misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine
Principle of man dawns upon human thought,
and leads it to "where the young child was,"
– even to the birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual
sense of being and of what Life includes. Thus the whole
earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light,
chasing away the darkness of error.
Spiritual freedom
191:16
The human thought must free itself from self-imposed
materiality and bondage. It should no longer
ask of the head, heart, or lungs: What are
man's prospects for life? Mind is not helpless. Intelli-
gence is not mute before non-intelligence.
191:21
By its own volition, not a blade of grass springs up, not
a spray buds within the vale, not a leaf unfolds its fair
outlines, not a flower starts from its cloistered cell.
191:24
The Science of being reveals man and immortality as
based on Spirit. Physical sense defines mortal man as
based on matter, and from this premise infers the mor-
tality of the body.
No physical affinity
191:28
The illusive senses may fancy affinities with their op-
posites; but in Christian Science, Truth never mingles
with error. Mind has no affinity with matter,
and therefore Truth is able to cast out the ills
of the flesh. Mind, God, sends forth the aroma of Spirit,
192:1
the atmosphere of intelligence. The belief that a pulpy
substance under the skull is mind is a mockery of intelli-
gence, a mimicry of Mind.
192:4
We are Christian Scientists, only as we quit our reliance
upon that which is false and grasp the true. We are not
Christian Scientists until we leave all for Christ. Human
opinions are not spiritual. They come from the hearing
of the ear, from corporeality instead of from Principle,
and from the mortal instead of from the immortal. Spirit
is not separate from God. Spirit is God.
Human power a blind force
192:11
Erring power is a material belief, a blind miscalled force,
the offspring of will and not of wisdom, of the mortal mind
and not of the immortal. It is the headlong
cataract, the devouring flame, the tempest's
breath. It is lightning and hurricane, all that is selfish,
wicked, dishonest, and impure.
The one real power
192:17
Moral and spiritual might belong to Spirit, who holds
the "wind in His fists;" and this teaching accords with
Science and harmony. In Science, you can
have no power opposed to God, and the physi-
cal senses must give up their false testimony. Your in-
fluence for good depends upon the weight you throw into
the right scale. The good you do and embody gives you
the only power obtainable. Evil is not power. It is a
mockery of strength, which erelong betrays its weakness
and falls, never to rise.
192:27
We walk in the footsteps of Truth and Love by follow-
ing the example of our Master in the understanding of
divine metaphysics. Christianity is the basis of true heal-
ing. Whatever holds human thought in line with unselfed
love, receives directly the divine power.
Mind cures hip-disease
192:32
I was called to visit Mr. Clark in Lynn, who had been
193:1
confined to his bed six months with hip-disease, caused by
a fall upon a wooden spike when quite a boy. On enter-
ing the house I met his physician, who said that
the patient was dying. The physician had just
probed the ulcer on the hip, and said the bone was carious
for several inches. He even showed me the probe, which
had on it the evidence of this condition of the bone. The
doctor went out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and
sightless. The dew of death was on his brow. I went to
his bedside. In a few moments his face changed; its
death-pallor gave place to a natural hue. The eyelids
closed gently and the breathing became natural; he was
asleep. In about ten minutes he opened his eyes and
said: "I feel like a new man. My suffering is all gone."
It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon
when this took place.
193:17
I told him to rise, dress himself, and take supper with
his family. He did so. The next day I saw him in the
yard. Since then I have not seen him, but am informed
that he went to work in two weeks. The discharge from
the sore stopped, and the sore was healed. The diseased
condition had continued there ever since the injury was
received in boyhood.
Since his recovery I have been informed that his physi-
cian claims to have cured him, and that his mother has
been threatened with incarceration in an insane asylum
for saying: "It was none other than God and that woman
who healed him." I cannot attest the truth of that
report, but what I saw and did for that man, and what
his physician said of the case, occurred just as I have
narrated.
193:32
It has been demonstrated to me that Life is God
194:1
and that the might of omnipotent Spirit shares not its
strength with matter or with human will. Review-
ing this brief experience, I cannot fail to discern the
coincidence of the spiritual idea of man with the divine
Mind.
Change of belief
194:6
A change in human belief changes all the physical symp-
toms, and determines a case for better or for
worse. When one's false belief is corrected
Truth sends a report of health over the body.
194:10
Destruction of the auditory nerve and paralysis of the
optic nerve are not necessary to ensure deafness and blind-
ness; for if mortal mind says, "I am deaf and blind," it
will be so without an injured nerve. Every theory op-
posed to this fact (as I learned in metaphysics) would
presuppose man, who is immortal in spiritual under-
standing, a mortal in material belief.
Power of habit
194:17
The authentic history of Kaspar Hauser is a useful hint
as to the frailty and inadequacy of mortal mind. It
proves beyond a doubt that education consti-
tutes this so-called mind, and that, in turn,
mortal mind manifests itself in the body by the false
sense it imparts. Incarcerated in a dungeon, where
neither sight nor sound could reach him, at the age of
seventeen Kaspar was still a mental infant, crying and
chattering with no more intelligence than a babe, and
realizing Tennyson's description:
194:27
An infant crying in the night,
An infant crying for the light,
And with no language but a cry.
194:30
His case proves material sense to be but a belief formed
by education alone. The light which affords us joy gave
195:1
him a belief of intense pain. His eyes were inflamed by
the light. After the babbling boy had been taught to
speak a few words, he asked to be taken back to his dun-
geon, and said that he should never be happy elsewhere.
Outside of dismal darkness and cold silence he found no
peace. Every sound convulsed him with anguish. All
that he ate, except his black crust, produced violent
retchings. All that gives pleasure to our educated senses
gave him pain through those very senses, trained in an
opposite direction.
Useful knowledge
195:11
The point for each one to decide is, whether it is mortal
mind or immortal Mind that is causative. We
should forsake the basis of matter for meta-
physical Science and its divine Principle.
195:15
Whatever furnishes the semblance of an idea governed
by its Principle, furnishes food for thought. Through as-
tronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, mathematics,
thought passes naturally from effect back to cause.
195:19
Academics of the right sort are requisite. Observa-
tion, invention, study, and original thought are expansive
and should promote the growth of mortal mind out of it-
self, out of all that is mortal.
195:23
It is the tangled barbarisms of learning which we
deplore, – the mere dogma, the speculative theory, the
nauseous fiction. Novels, remarkable only for their
exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens
of depravity, fill our young readers with wrong tastes
and sentiments. Literary commercialism is lowering the
intellectual standard to accommodate the purse and to
meet a frivolous demand for amusement instead of for
improvement. Incorrect views lower the standard of
truth.
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